Almost forty years old - I did it in college...although not with black tights...black opaque hose were not that fashionable in Texas back then, not even in winter...

Apparently, this is a thing again. We were at Disneyland yesterday and I saw several women with this look. It works better on some than on others is the nicest thing that I could say.

On the topic of the SS whine, one big issue is the fact that, according to her report, the other women looked at her. Didn't say anything, just looked. I think that this was a case of the guilty fleeing where nobody was pursuing.

The fashion police don't pursue - they just publish your photo with a big black bar over your faces as a "what not to do" example.

The Volvo that made a left turn in front of me, leaving a gas station when I was on the road going straight (they ran a stop sign) - then ran the next stop sign to make a right onto the main road, went over two lanes to make a U-turn to head back 180 degrees the other direction.

If the Volvo had gone out the other side of the parking lot in a right turn, they would have had a left turn light to make a left turn and end up going the same direction 1/2 block further south....

An SS Parent in Texas has filed a "bullying" complaint after their son's high school football team was on the losing end of a 91-0 game.

The winning team's coach (who is the accused in the bullying complaint) actualy pulled all of his starters early in the game, and even the losing team's coach has come out and said that he disagrees with the complaint.

"This SS art thief is blaming the Jesus for the paintings hie stole for not putting on alarms."

I fully agree that he's trying to push the blame and I hope he gets full justice levied against him, but he does make a good point, in that a museum that doesn't protect its holdings in a reasonable manner is doing its backers a real disservice. If the art is valuable enough to warrant stealing, then they should really be looking at investing in alarms.

My cousin's memoir of love and loneliness while raising a child with multiple disabilities will be out on Amazon soon! Know the Night, by Maria Mutch, has been called "full of hope, light, and companionship for surviving the small hours of the night."

An SS Parent in Texas has filed a "bullying" complaint after their son's high school football team was on the losing end of a 91-0 game.

The winning team's coach (who is the accused in the bullying complaint) actualy pulled all of his starters early in the game, and even the losing team's coach has come out and said that he disagrees with the complaint.

She does sound like a piece of work, but I can understand the underlying sentiment. I spent several years in elementary through middle school refusing to wear flattering-looking or even new clothes, because my school was very homogeneous middle class and I, as a doctor's daughter, got quite a few snotty comments about being the "rich girl" from my peers. This is despite my parents taking a fantastic attitude about money (we never knew how much dad earned, we always had enough for what we needed and a smattering of what we wanted but we were by no means spoiled, and my parents were careful to make sure we learned early on to make purchasing decisions based on quality and usefulness and not advertising/peer pressure/brand names/etc.) I learned to never talk about money, ever, and to lie about how much things cost sometimes because people would judge me for them if I didn't. (My sister and I shared a new car in high school, for example - we did get a fantastic price because my grandfather was a VP at GM, so the cost of a new car wasn't that much more than a used car. We paid for gas, but my parents paid for the car. I told everyone I was putting part of my summer job money toward the car, because that's what all my friends did . . .)

So yeah, long story short, I'm not trying to apologize for her - but I don't think she should have to defend her financial circumstances, either. I'll admit I'm not comfortable with the tone of some of the comments here, in the "poor little rich girl" vein - she chose an irritating way to express her opinion, and she may well be spoiled/bratty/etc., but bullying about one's financial situation can go both ways.

I can also understand the underlying sentiment, even if the blogger could have phrased herself a little better.

I went to a good school; an all-girls' convent school with a fancy (and expensive) uniform; a school that consistently got (gets) good exam results, and has a waiting list a mile long. Despite what most people think, there is a lot of variety in terms of student intake. Some students come from extremely wealthy families, some from extremely poor families, and others anywhere in between.I was raised in a comfortable, middle-class household. I speak "properly", read books, and was treated to all sorts of theatre trips, visits to museums and castles and old houses and historical sites around the UK as a child and well into my teens. But my parents didn't give everything out freely - we were frequently told "no", made to earn things, etc.

Anyway, at school, the "cool" kids were the streetwise ones, the ones with freedom to do as they wanted at home, whose mums were more like friends than parents, etc. Not only this, but the way you talked also influenced how people treated you. To be in with the "cool" kids, you were expected to use urban colloquialisms, and talk as if you were from a sink estate. I think part of it was also the rap/hip-hop etc that some of them were into; something I came to think of (in the latter years of school, due to studying Dickens' "Hard Times" in my English class) as the Josiah Bounderby complex. Basically, the idea that being brought up comfortably/middle class wasn't an achievement, and that you were supposed to have dragged yourself up from the gutter, fighting against the odds to prove yourself. Basically, a contest of who had the hardest life, or something. As such, it wasn't uncommon to hear girls who lived in nice big houses in the green leafy suburbs, and who would be getting a car for their birthday, talking with a south-of-the-estuary accent, glottal stops and all.

Some of these "cool kids" attempted to give the impression that a comfortable, middle-class, suburban upbringing was something to be ashamed of. (I still don't understand it. Never have done.) Because if you were middle-class, you couldn't be "hard" or street-smart or whatever - the wisdom was, everything was handed to you on a plate, which made you "soft". Conversely, doing/attending certain things, made you "posh".

But here's the thing I find interesting. Some of the people who grow up the most deprived, do their best to ensure their own kids don't grow up the same way. They want to do well so that their kids can go to "good" schools (sometimes private or whatever), have experiences and opportunities they never had. Just look at some of the rappers who grew up in the "ghetto", or Jade Goody (whatever peoples' opinion of her).

The way I see it (the way I've always seen it, really), is that it's sad. Some people become ashamed of how they were brought up, simply because their parents had money or resources, or sent them to private school, or had a nice house. I've known people who felt they had to play down what kind of school they went to, or which area they lived in, because they felt a sense of shame that they personally hadn't had to toil for a comfortable childhood. Some people who grew up in extremely wealthy households, felt the need to distance themselves from that, even to the point of living in squats, in an effort to prove "I'm not just some spoilt rich kid!"

Wasn't there a girl in The Breakfast Club who was "poor" but actually had a decent sized house?

Molly Ringwald's character - lived in a nice middle class house and I think had her own car, but apparently not having a mansion and servants meant she was 'poor'. I do wonder how much of that has to do with the Hollywood lifestyle - maybe nobody working on the film realised how this would come across to the paying public who would love to be that 'poor'.

Wasn't there a girl in The Breakfast Club who was "poor" but actually had a decent sized house?

Molly Ringwald's character - lived in a nice middle class house and I think had her own car, but apparently not having a mansion and servants meant she was 'poor'. I do wonder how much of that has to do with the Hollywood lifestyle - maybe nobody working on the film realised how this would come across to the paying public who would love to be that 'poor'.

I think they knew. I think the whole idea was to emphasize the "everything's relative" concept.

Wasn't there a girl in The Breakfast Club who was "poor" but actually had a decent sized house?

Molly Ringwald's character - lived in a nice middle class house and I think had her own car, but apparently not having a mansion and servants meant she was 'poor'. I do wonder how much of that has to do with the Hollywood lifestyle - maybe nobody working on the film realised how this would come across to the paying public who would love to be that 'poor'.

If I am remembering correctly, parts of the film were poking fun at her 'poor little rich girl' attitude, so I think the filmmakers did OK.

Logged

You are only young once. After that you have to think up some other excuse.

Wasn't there a girl in The Breakfast Club who was "poor" but actually had a decent sized house?

Molly Ringwald's character - lived in a nice middle class house and I think had her own car, but apparently not having a mansion and servants meant she was 'poor'. I do wonder how much of that has to do with the Hollywood lifestyle - maybe nobody working on the film realised how this would come across to the paying public who would love to be that 'poor'.

Wasn't there a girl in The Breakfast Club who was "poor" but actually had a decent sized house?

Molly Ringwald's character - lived in a nice middle class house and I think had her own car, but apparently not having a mansion and servants meant she was 'poor'. I do wonder how much of that has to do with the Hollywood lifestyle - maybe nobody working on the film realised how this would come across to the paying public who would love to be that 'poor'.

I think that was "Pretty in Pink." In "The Breakfast Club," I don't think you ever see her house, and one of parents drops her off at the school and picks her up afterwards.